Worried about the future of Premiere Pro development when Adobe keeps telling me that by making things take more clicks it is actually better

Starting with the Adobe Premiere Pro beta and it’s redesigned header bar, which their is a discussion on about at the Adobe Support Community for Premiere Pro Beta.

Where adobe moved the workspaces to under a single button with no display for what workspace you are in. And when us users gave feedback their seemed to be a fight back.

Ann (and everyone else) – I hear you about the change in muscle memory and requiring 2 clicks instead of one. I really do empathize – change is hard. I was an editor for 10 years before joing the software game and the placement of buttons is cemented in my brain. I too didn’t like the workspaces in the dropdown menu at first. But I have been using it now for a few months (yes I still edit constantly) and I’ve found that I prefer the menu dropdown. It’s a much better use of space, a cleaner look, and you can see all your workspaces at once without needing the overflow menu. I ask that you give it a chance and push past the innitial discomfort and really try this new arrangement. Also remember that this is not the end of the road. And getting reactions like this is exactly why we put it in beta first before just releasing and forcing it upon everyone.

This was my first instance of Adobe telling me that more than one click was better than one click (and in this case wasting space and not displaying the current workspace). Now in this instance at least Adobe seems to have relented and is going to allow us to display 3 workspaces in the title bar, though not by default.

And then at the Facebook Premiere Pro Editors user group, which I have subsequently left since my posts had links to this blog and I was told users didn’t like that, and I my tone had to be calmer and more deferential to Adobe employees who post on it, when posting about the now completely changed methods for dealing with the damn (see that is what would piss them off) ALEXA AMIRA LUT, I was told the new method was faster, when it takes more clicks, so obviously it is not.

Previously I could select all my footage and right click and Disable Master Clips. Now I have to right click go to drop down menu and select Interpret Footage, then in the subsequent dialogue go down to color man agement and select the Embedded AMIRA LUT drop down menu and then select none. IN NO WAY IS THAT FASTER THAN BEING ABLE TO TURN IT OFF FROM THE DROP DOWN MENU.

Now the first example they fixed after user feedback. The second is part of a re-designed Color Management System, that doesn’t seem to be documented at all by Adobe as of yet (boy they could learn something from Black Magic Designs about manuals especially for release versions, ha again something that would have gotten me reprimanded by the Premier Pro Editors User Group) and my questions on it were pulled from the group, so I deleted them, which is why Adobe employees should just be interacting on their own web site, and not in places where people unaffiliated with Adobe are removing posts because of tone or linking to content not on Facebook (if you at all read this site, you see I do long posts with many images, so there is no way I could do the same in a facebook post), so there is no chance for Adobe to comment or users to share their opinion and maybe get things changed.

And it does worry me that in both situations the Adobe employees told us that the new methods were faster, when they are demonstrably not. They are working on a slow but full rework of Premiere Pro, and it is statements like this that worry me the most. They think their new way is better and faster, and just implement something slower.

I mean why didn’t the whole Color Management change show up in the Beta? It just showed up in the release version, un-vetted by end users.

Now the fact that the did change the first example does give hope, but the new Import and Export dialogues being given such prominence over work spaces does worry me. Especially since so much of the weirdness of the new Export Dialogue doesn’t seem to have changed since it first hit the beta.

Anyway I am just thinking out loud here as I like to do here. You be the judge.

Leave a Reply